1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer electronic component and a manufacturing method thereof and, in particular, a multilayer electronic component whose internal electrode layers are thinned, such as a multilayer ceramic capacitor, as well as a manufacturing method of the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, along with miniaturization and high densification of electronic component, a multilayer electronic component such as a multilayer ceramic capacitor is required to have a small size, a high capacity and a high reliability. Therefore the multilayer electronic component is aimed at: (i) thinning a dielectric layer and increasing the number of laminated layers; (ii) thinning internal electrode layers; and (iii) increasing the dielectric constant of the dielectric layer. For example, there has been developed a multilayer electronic component of high capacity wherein a dielectric layer has a thickness of 5 μm or less and 100 or more dielectric layers are laminated.
The internal electrode layers of a multilayer electronic component have heretofore been formed by screen-printing method using a conductive paste. The internal electrode layers contain, as a conductive paste component, a coexisting ingredient composed of ceramic powder other than a metal component, a resin component and an organic solvent component and the like. The internal electrode layers are formed in a mesh. It is therefore difficult to completely cover a region at which the internal electrode layers should be formed originally. This results in the problem that the effective area of the internal electrode layers is reduced, failing to obtain electrostatic capacity.
In order to solve the above problem due to thinning of internal electrode layers, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-243650 discloses a multilayer electronic component, in which a metal film serving as an internal electrode layer is formed on a film by a physical thin-film forming method such as sputtering or evaporation, alternatively, a chemical thin-film forming method such as electroless plating, and an internal electrode pattern is formed by transferring the metal film onto a dielectric green sheet, thereby manufacturing a multilayer electronic component.
In accordance with the multilayer electronic component disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-243650, the metal film serving as an internal electrode layer is formed on the film so as to have a uniform thickness by a physical thin-film forming method such as sputtering or evaporation, alternatively, a chemical thin-film forming method such as electroless plating, and the internal electrode pattern is formed by transferring the metal film onto the dielectric green sheet, thereby manufacturing the multilayer electronic component.
However, the use of such an internal electrode pattern that is uniform in thickness increases the effective area of the internal electrode layer, whereas electric connection property between the internal electrode layer and an external electrode is liable to degrade because the sectional area of an edge is reduced when the internal electrode pattern is thinned. As the result, the electrostatic capacity according to a design is hard to develop, thus leading to the problem of increasing variations in electrostatic capacity.